"Purge refers collectively to several related campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the 1930s, which removed all of his remaining opposition from power. It involved the purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, both occurring within a period characterized by omnipresent police surveillance, widespread suspicion of ""saboteurs"", imprisonment and killings. In the Western World, this was referred to as ""the Great Terror"". Revolutionary terror Revolutionary terror (also referred to as revolutionary terrorism, or a reign of terror) refers to the institutionalized application of"
"White Terror (Russia) The White Terror in Russia refers to the organized violence and mass killings carried out by the White Army during the Russian Civil War (1917–23). It began after the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917, and continued until the defeat of the White Army at the hands of the Red Army. The White Army fought the Red Army for power, which engaged in its own Red Terror. According to some Russian historians, the White Terror was a series of premeditated actions directed by their leaders, although this view is contested by others. Estimates for those killed in"
"Terrorism in Russia Terrorism in Russia has a long history starting from the time of the Russian Empire. Terrorism, in the modern sense, means violence against civilians to achieve political or ideological objectives by creating extreme fear. Terrorism was an important tool used by Marxist revolutionaries in the early 20th century to disrupt the social, political, and economic system and enable rebels to bring down the Tzarist government. Terrorist tactics, such as hostage-taking, were widely used by the Soviet secret agencies, most notably during the Red Terror and Great Terror campaigns, against the population of their own country, according to"
"In the city of Slavgorod in Altai Krai, there is a monument for participants of the Chernodolsky Uprising and their families who fell victim to the White terror of Ataman Annekov. White Terror (Russia) The White Terror in Russia refers to the organized violence and mass killings carried out by the White Army during the Russian Civil War (1917–23). It began after the Bolsheviks seized power in November 1917, and continued until the defeat of the White Army at the hands of the Red Army. The White Army fought the Red Army for power, which engaged in its own Red"
"Red Terror The Red Terror was a period of political repression and mass killings carried out by Bolsheviks after the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918. The term is usually applied to Bolshevik political repression during the whole period of the Civil War (1917–1922), as distinguished from the White Terror carried out by the White Army (Russian monarchists) against their political enemies (including the Bolsheviks). It was modeled on the Terror of the French Revolution. The Cheka (the Bolshevik secret police) carried out the repressions of the Red Terror. Estimates for the total number of people killed during"
"Russian apartment bombings The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow and Volgodonsk between 4 and 16 September 1999, killing 293 people and injuring more than 1,000, spreading a wave of fear across the country. To date, no one has taken credit for the bombings; the Russian government blamed Chechen militants, although they, along with Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov, denied responsibility. The bombings, together with the Dagestan War, led the country into the Second Chechen War. Then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's handling of the crisis boosted his popularity"
"Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror was a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union which occurred from 1936 to 1938. It involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party and government officials, repression of wealthy landlords and the Red Army leadership, widespread police surveillance, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, imprisonment, and arbitrary executions. In Russian historiography, the period of the most intense purge, 1937–1938, is called Yezhovshchina (literally, ""Yezhov phenomenon"", commonly translated as ""times of Yezhov"" or ""doings of Yezhov""), after Nikolai Yezhov, the head of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, who was executed a"
"Karl Kautsky and other historians of Bolshevism. Starting from the end of the 20th century, significant terrorist activity has taken place in Moscow, most notably apartment bombings and the Moscow theater hostage crisis. Many more acts of terrorism have been committed in Chechnya, Dagestan, and other parts of the country. Some of them became a matter of significant controversy, since journalists and scholars claimed that they were directed by the Russian secret services, often through their Chechen agent provocateurs. German Social Democrat Karl Kautsky traces the origins of terrorism, including the one in Russian Empire, to the ""Reign of Terror"""
"famine in Central Asia. In the late 1930s, Khojayev and the entire leadership of the Uzbek Republic were purged and executed by Soviet leader Joseph V. Stalin (in power 1927–53) and replaced by Russian officials. The Russification of political and economic life in Uzbekistan that began in the 1930s continued through the 1970s. During World War II, Stalin exiled entire national groups from the Caucasus and the Crimea to Uzbekistan to prevent ""subversive"" activity against the war effort. Moscow’s control over Uzbekistan weakened in the 1970s as Uzbek party leader Sharaf Rashidov brought many cronies and relatives into positions of"
"of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. A very large segment of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited. In the period between 1927 and 1940, the number of Orthodox Churches in the Russian Republic fell from 29,584 to less than 500. Between 1917 and 1940, 130,000 Orthodox priests were arrested. The widespread persecution and internecine disputes within the church hierarchy lead to the seat of Patriarch of Moscow being"
"of the Soviet Union in Moscow, from 1930 to 1937, replacing Nikolai Bryukhanov. He was executed during the Great Purge in March 1938. He was allegedly forced to publicly confess to his ""nefarious"" activities during the period of Ukrainization at Trial of the Twenty One with Christian Rakovsky and nineteen other members of the so-called Right Opposition. These were former Soviet leaders, actual or presumed political enemies of Joseph Stalin, who were charged with opposing the policies of rapid industrialization, forced collectivization, and central planning, as well as international espionage, attempted overthrow of the Soviet Union, and planning to eliminate"
"Great terror in 1937–1938. In the late 1930s, Stalin's Soviet Union was no longer satisfied with the status quo in its relations with Finland. This came as a result of a change in Soviet foreign policy, which now pursued the aim of recovering the provinces of Tsarist Russia lost during the chaos of the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War. The Soviets considered the old Empire to have had an optimal balance of security and territory, and their thoughts were shaped by a historical precedent: as the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 was intended to protect Tsarist Saint Petersburg"
"in order to train revolutionaries. In addition they had a secret sub-group called Hell whose purpose was political terrorism, with the assassination of the Tsar as their ultimate goal. This resulted in the failed attempt by Dmitry Karakozov on the 4th of April 1866. Dmitry was tried and hanged at Smolensk Field in St Petersburg. The leader of The Organization, Nicholas Ishutin, was also tried and was to be executed before being exiled to Siberia for life. Thus ended The Organization. The White Terror began by the Tsar putting Count Mikhail Muravyov (1845-1900) (otherwise known as 'Hanger Muravyov' due to"
"generation of Nicholas Berdyaev, Sergius Bulgakov, Nicholas Lossky, and Lev Shestov. The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited. The sixth sector of the OGPU, led by Yevgeny Tuchkov, aggressively arrested and executed bishops, priests, and devout worshippers, such as Metropolitan Veniamin in Petrograd in 1922 for refusing to accede to the demand to hand in church valuables"
"foreign merchants. The bombing killed 13 people and injured 47. In 2008, eight members of the neo-Nazi organization The Saviour were sentenced for their roles in the attack. In March 2010 suicide bombings were carried out by two women who were aligned with Caucasus Emirate and Al-Qaeda. The terrorist attack happened during the morning rush hour of March 29, 2010, at two stations of the Moscow Metro (Lubyanka and Park Kultury), with roughly 40 minutes interval between. At least 40 people were killed, and over 100 injured. The Domodedovo International Airport bombing was a suicide bombing in the international arrival"
"sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals. The result of state sponsored atheism was to transform the Church into a persecuted and martyred Church. In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed. The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labor camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited. In the period between 1927 and 1940, the"
"Medvedev Forest massacre The Medvedev Forest massacre was a mass execution in the Soviet Union carried out by the NKVD on September 11, 1941. Barely three months after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, 157 political prisoners incarcerated at Oryol Prison were executed in Medvedev Forest, just outside Oryol, by personal order of Joseph Stalin. Among the victims were Christian Rakovsky, Sergei Efron, Olga Kameneva, Garegin Apresov, Maria Spiridonova and Dmitry Pletnyov (a famous doctor who had been sentenced to 25 years in the fabricated trial). In 1941, the Oryol Prison contained some five thousand political prisoners. This execution"
"Terror in the 1930s–1950s. He was posthumously rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 25 April 1956. From 1931 to 1937, Bron and his family resided in Moscow, at 2/20 Serafimovich Street, apt. No. 403, a newly built massive building across the river from the Kremlin, known as ""Dom pravitel'stva"" (""Government House""), the residence of the upper echelons of the Soviet hierarchy, described by Yuri Trifonov in his novel, ""House on the Embankment"". After Bron's arrest, his wife, Klara Bron, was arrested too, and the children, son Lev and daughter Miriam, were evicted from"
"by Moscow police in a ""terrorist hunt"". Colonel Magomed Tolboyev, a cosmonaut and Hero of the Russian Federation, was attacked by Moscow police patrol and beaten because of his Chechen-sounding name. The Russian public appeared to be generally supportive of increased security measures. A 16 September 2004 Levada-Center opinion poll found 58% of Russians supporting stricter counter-terrorism laws and the death penalty for terrorism, while 33% would support banning all Chechens from entering Russian cities. In the wake of Beslan, the government proceeded to toughen laws on terrorism and expand the powers of law enforcement agencies. In addition, Vladimir Putin"
"1940. The Terror damaged the Soviet Union's reputation abroad, particularly among sympathetic leftists. As it wound down, Stalin sought to deflect responsibility from himself, blaming its ""excesses"" and ""violations of law"" on Yezhov. As a Marxist–Leninist, Stalin expected an inevitable conflict between competing capitalist powers; after Nazi Germany annexed Austria and then part of Czechoslovakia in 1938, Stalin recognised this war was looming. He sought to maintain Soviet neutrality, hoping that a German war against France and Britain would lead to Soviet dominance in Europe. Militarily, the Soviets also faced a threat from the east, with Soviet troops clashing with"
"and Russia, were taken into custody in Moscow. The Russian citizens Kamo Fyodorovich Saakov, an ethnic Armenian, his wife Irina Alexandrovna Saakova and Anatoly Anatolyevich Ilchuk were arrested in July 1994, charged with preparations of the attacks. In August of the same year Saakov was sentenced to life imprisonment and Ilchuk to 15-year imprisonment for preparation of diversion, contraband and illegal custody of weaponry. The investigation ended in early October, 1995. On November 29, 1997, the Russian law enforcement bodies extradited to Azerbaijan the 30-year-old Lezghin Azer Aslanov, who was charged with planting a bomb in the second attack. According"
"in September. During the period of the provisional government Grand Duke Andrei, his brother and mother lived mostly undisturbed in Kislovodsk, protected by local Cossacks. In the summer of 1918, the Bolsheviks tightened their grip on members of the former Imperial family. They ordered the assassination of those imprisoned, including Tsar Nicholas II and his immediate family. Seventeen of the 52 Romanovs living in Russia were executed during the red terror. The Bolsheviks arrested Grand Duke Andrei and his brother Boris on the night of 7 August 1918, after a systematic search of their villa. They were taken to Pyatigorsk"
"Empire. The attack killed forty people and injured fifty others, according to official archive documents. The robbers escaped with 341,000 rubles (equivalent to around US 3.86 million in 2017). The robbery was organized by a number of top-level Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Maxim Litvinov, Leonid Krasin, and Alexander Bogdanov, and executed by a party of revolutionaries led by Stalin's early associate Ter-Petrosian (Kamo). Because such activities were explicitly prohibited by the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), the robbery and the killings caused outrage within the party against the Bolsheviks (a faction within the"
"nationalization of the few remaining private enterprises. Many of those who had been arrested in the 1920s would continue to remain in prison throughout the 1930s and beyond. The main target of the anti-religious campaign in the 1920s and 1930s was the Russian Orthodox Church, which had the largest number of faithful. Nearly all of its clergy, and many of its believers, were shot or sent to labour camps. Theological schools were closed, and church publications were prohibited. More than 85,000 Orthodox priests were shot in 1937 alone. Only a twelfth of the Russian Orthodox Church's priests were left functioning"
"actually used.) Prominent citizens of villages were often taken as hostages and executed if the resistance fighters did not surrender. Red Terror in Soviet Russia was the campaign of mass arrests and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government. The Red Terror was officially announced on September 2, 1918 by Yakov Sverdlov and ended in about October 1918. However Sergei Melgunov applies this term to repressions for the whole period of the Russian Civil War, 1918-1922. Estimates for the total number of people executed during the initial phase Red Terror are at least 10,000, with roughly 28,000 executed per year between"
"True Russian Orthodox Church The True Russian Orthodox Church () was a Russian doomsday cult founded by Pyotr Kuznetsov. The self-name of the group was ""Heavenly Jerusalem"" (). This group broke away from the Russian Orthodox Church, considering it insufficiently orthodox. Its members were not allowed to eat processed food, watch television and handle money. They rejected bar codes, National identification number and passports because they contained satanic symbols (""the number of the Beast""). In November 2007, between 29-35 members of the group holed themselves up in a cave in Russia's Penza region, near the village Nikolskoye, threatening mass suicide"
"were killed in such attacks, in 2008 at least 17 were killed and in 2009 the number rose to 45. In March 2010, Islamist militants organised the 2010 Moscow Metro bombings, which killed 40 people. One of the two blasts took place at Lubyanka station, near the FSB headquarters. Militant leader Doku Umarov—dubbed ""Russia's Osama Bin Laden""—took responsibility for the attacks. In July 2010, President Dmitry Medvedev expanded the FSB's powers in its fight against terrorism. FSB officers received the power to issue warnings to citizens on actions that could lead to committing crimes and arrest people for 15 days"
"which waged a White Terror against the Agrarians and the Communists. The Communist leader Georgi Dimitrov fled to the Soviet Union. There was savage repression in 1925 following the second of two failed attempts on the Tsar's life in the bomb attack on Sofia Cathedral (the first attempt took place in the mountain pass of Arabakonak). But in 1926, the Tsar persuaded Tsankov to resign and a more moderate government under Andrey Lyapchev took office. An amnesty was proclaimed, although the Communists remained banned. The Agrarians reorganised and won elections in 1931 under the leadership of Nikola Mushanov. Just when"
"to escape Russia for the Balkans, where they established the Russian All-Military Union, the ROVS. The Cossacks who remained in Russia endured more than a decade of continual repression, ""e.g.,"" the portioning of the lands of the Terek, Ural and Semirechye hosts, forced cultural assimilation and repression of the Russian Orthodox Church, deportation and, ultimately, the Soviet famine of 1932–33. The repressions ceased and some privileges were restored after publication of ""And Quiet Flows the Don"" (1934) by Mikhail Sholokhov. On 22 June 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the USSR. The Soviet Union had already been a part of World War"
"officially led by Movsar Barayev. After a two-and-a-half-day siege, Russian Spetsnaz forces pumped an unknown chemical agent (thought to be fentanyl, 3-methylfentanyl), into the building's ventilation system and raided it. Officially, 39 of the attackers were killed by Russian forces, along with at least 129 and possibly many more of the hostages (including nine foreigners). All but a few of the hostages who died were killed by the gas pumped into the theatre, and many condemned the use of the gas as heavy handed. Roughly, 170 people died in all. On September 1, 2004, in what became known as the"
"hostage after a school in the Russian republic of North Ossetia–Alania was seized by a pro-Chechen multi-ethnic group aligned to Riyad-us Saliheen Brigade of Martyrs; hundreds of people died during the storming by Russian forces. Since 2000, Russia has also experienced a string of suicide bombings that killed hundreds of people in the Caucasian republics of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, as well as in Russia proper including Moscow. Responsibility for most of these attacks were claimed by either Shamil Basayev's Islamic-nationalist rebel faction or, later, by Dokka Umarov's pan-Islamist movement Caucasus Emirate which is aiming to unite most of Russia's"
"decades. Others died, including over 20,000 military officers who perished in the Katyn massacres. The Soviets quickly Sovietized the annexed lands, introducing compulsory collectivization. They proceeded to confiscate, nationalize and redistribute private and state-owned Polish property. In the process, they banned political parties and public associations and imprisoned or executed their leaders as ""enemies of the people"". In line with Soviet anti-religious policy, churches and religious organizations were persecuted. On 10 February 1940, the NKVD unleashed a campaign of terror against ""anti-Soviet"" elements in occupied Poland. The Soviets' targets included persons who often traveled abroad, persons involved in overseas correspondence,"
"or prosecuting law-breakers. The clergy were attacked as foreign spies and trials of bishops were conducted with their clergy as well as lay adherents who were reported as 'subversive terroristic gangs' that had been unmasked. Official propaganda at the time called for the banishment of the very concept of God from the Soviet Union. These persecutions were meant to assist the ultimate socialist goal of eliminating religion. From 1932 to 1937 Joseph Stalin declared the 'five-year plans of atheism' and the LMG was charged with completely eliminating all religious expression in the country. Many of these same methods and terror"